A Sneaky Secret About Maintaining or Losing Weight

But, I know one secret and it’s this–you have to be bold to fight against weight gain.

Here’s the deal. If we’re talking about weight loss…and who isn’t these days, we need to talk about sugar. WAIT!!

I’m not a sugar hater! I’m not going to take your sugar away. Not by a long shot.

I’m in love with sugar.

I’d marry it if the US wasn’t so conservative about that kind of thing.

Confession: If I didn’t feel like total crap the next day AND I could maintain my weight I would eat candy excessively. Specifically, that caramel candy donut with the white powdered sugar in the center.

I respect candy. Candy doesn’t try to be anything else but what it is.

Candy is a sweet, superficial, exclamation point of a food.

It’s okay to eat a little candy, a little bakery, a donut now and then-it’s not toxic in small amounts nor is it dirty eating or anything of the sort.

Candy-ON Wayne.

The thing we have to watch is the sugar that is added to our otherwise healthy foods that turn unsuspecting dairy, condiments, bread, and yogurt into candy.

Watch this.

Here’s you at lunch trying to eat healthy.

A piece of bread a 100% whole wheat bread from Brownberry has 4 grams of sugar per slice. This means that there is one teaspoon of sugar in each slice of bread which adds 16 calories to each slice. If you make a sandwich that is 32 calories more than you need because you can make bread without that much sugar.

Then you add a yogurt?

One cup of Dannon Activa Greek Yogurt is 34 to 40 grams of sugar (depending on the flavor). That means there is about 9 teaspoons of sugar in that yogurt and 120 calories of sugar and that’s before you get to the white stuff. Your yogurt is candy.

So in a meal of 2 pieces of bread and a cup of yogurt you are consuming 150 calories of sugar. Sugar that you don’t get to enjoy like candy. Sugar you are eating when you think you are being virtuous. Sugar that isn’t as fun as candy.

You know how many gummy bears you can eat for that?

17

Sugar amps up the calories of your food and possibly throws your calorie consumption into the too high arena.

So here’s you, trying to be good everyday by eating some whole grain bread and yogurt and you do it every day for 6 months.

6 months (180 days) X 150 cals (accidental candy eaten in the form of supposed healthy foods) = 27,000 calories eaten in sugar. Divide this by 3500 (amount of calories in a pound of fat) = 7.8 pounds that you don’t lose or pounds that you gain by eating in sneaky sugar.

BUT let’s be clear.

You only gain this weight if the yogurt and bread are eaten in excess of your calorie needs.

You don’t gain weight just by eating sugar.

But, say, everyfood you eat has sugar in it. That is what nickels and dimes your diet to death.

All that sugar in your diet adds up and explains why you are gaining while eating supposedly healthy OR you aren’t losing because your diet is being highjacked by hidden sugar.

My point is this-The sugar hidden in your foods is sneaky calories that you can do without.

Here’s how you read labels.

NUTS AND BOLTS:

Look under in the label under SUGARS. If there is a number there, like say 16 grams, that equal 4 teaspoons of sugar. 4 grams = 1 teaspoon of sugar (I make this conversion for you because I don’t have any idea what a gram looks like).

If you want to know how many calories that sugar amounts to in that food take the grams and multiply by 4 because 1 gram = 4 calories.

TAKE AWAY: It’s the sneaky sugar in foods that makes weight loss so hard and weight gain so easy.

I hope this makes you mad and gives you the tools you need to teach others.

Chat to change people. Let’s chat to change the world.

Those buttons down below here are for chatting and changing the world with information. Click-On Wayne.

Hi Ann~
My son, Collin attends UWW and was in your class. I know that he enjoyed your class since out of all his classes, he talked about you and your class the most. He even suggested adding me to your email list. Which is huge for a son to recommend something to his mom! Thanks for your fun outlook on life and all of the helpful health info!

Today I weigh 172. That might sound like a lot but it’s 20 lbs less than what I weighed last year.

I’ve been preparing for my retirement (June 30, 2015) and I joined the local YMCA last January. I did some of the low impact chair aerobics for seniors to start but they are in the morning and since I still work full time the only time I could go was during vacation days. So I switched to the low impact pool aerobics and I love it. I go 4-5 days a week. My energy level has been going up and my blood pressure has been going down with the added exercise.

I also went back to MyFitnessPal to track my diet. I had quit before because, believe it or don’t, I was tired of the “you’re not eating enough” messages I’d get a few times a week. I used to skip breakfast and sometimes lunch. It is really easy for me to fast, which is not good. So I’d eat maybe 900-1100 calories and my body thought I was starving. So my metabolism slowed down to compensate and I just couldn’t lose weight.

Now I’m using MyFitnessPal to track my food again. They must have improved it as it now gives me not only calories but protein, carbs, sugar, fat and salt. This way I can make sure I don’t go over my daily allotment of sugar, fat or salt quite easily. I only wish they had a way to automatically lower the salt limit as I would like to set it lower.

I’m not only using it to track what I’ve eaten but plan what I’m going to eat the following day. That way on days I don’t exercise, I can make sure I don’t eat big calorie meals.

Thanksgiving will be a challenge but I don’t beat myself up if I go over one day, I just get on track the next day. MyFitnessPal tells me what I’ll weigh in five weeks if I continue to eat as I am. So one day over my limit won’t kill me. And since I have to note everything I eat, I stop and think seriously about whether I really want to eat it.

The sneaky sugars are in everything so I am a fervent label reader. No HFCS for five years. Limits on not only white sugar but also bread and rice. I make a lot of food from scratch because I can limit not only the sugar but all of the chemical sugar substitutes I may not even know the names of. More importantly, I can not only control the sugars but also the fat and especially the salt.

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'The Dog Year' is Ann Garvin's new new novel released by Berkley-a Penguin imprint.

'The Dog Year' is Ann Garvin's new novel by Berkley-a Penguin imprint. The Dog Year brings to life new characters that we fall in love with through their everyday happenstance and lively interactions.
Meet Ann here in a brief video about her novel, 'On Maggie's Watch' available through these retailers.

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Ann Garvin is a mother first, an Author (Berkley/Jove a Penguin imprint) a professor of Health (University of Wisconsin Whitewater) and creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Southern New Hampshire University. She’s a labradoodle at heart; a mutt with real enthusiasm for a people and a good laugh. Read more.

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The secrets & humor of writing, publishing, nutrition, stress, & exercise are some of what you will find in Ann Garvin’s blog. Her blog should be called, “Don’t Fence Me In” or “Come sit by me,” as it is what she would say if you find yourself together. But be prepared to get in trouble for laughing during the boring bits of life. Go to the blog.

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“[...] Ann Wertz Garvin writes with humor & compassion so well; just when I’d feel about to cry the scene would twist and I’d laugh out loud. She has such deep understanding for her flawed and trying-to-get better characters; [...].” -Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

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Uniting smart readers with like-minded writers through the Tall Poppy group. Ann knows women are shushed, under-valued, and cut “down to size.” But, Ann knows that if a tall poppy is left to grow, other poppies in the field will rise and reach for the ample sun where everybody gets a voice & everybody gets to grow.